Dan Kennedy's blog on media and politics • published by the Boston Phoenix from 2002 to 2005

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Saddam in black, white, and
gray. (Originally
posted 10/15/02 at 9:55 a.m.) The
New York Times and the Boston Globe both run
front-page stories today on the attitudes that ordinary Iraqis
hold toward their maximum leader, Saddam Hussein, and, by
implication, toward the United States. Together, they show the
difficulty of gauging the public mood in a totalitarian society
where speaking out against the regime is likely to get you
tortured and killed. The stories appear on the eve of a national
election in which Saddam is expected to get more than 99 percent
of the vote. Or else!

The Times piece,
by
John Burns, reports that
the surface enthusiasm Iraqis show for Saddam often masks much
nastier feelings. Though most Iraqis will offer ritual
pro-government rhetoric -- often in terms "strikingly similar" to
official "diatribes" -- Burns also found that ordinary citizens
rarely criticize George W. Bush or Tony Blair unless prompted, and
seem to hold a generally favorable view of the US and
Britain.

In the Globe,
Anthony
Shadid reports that Saddam
has boosted his popularity in recent months by increasing food
rations and government salaries, and by bestowing special favors
on those who hold jobs of critical importance to his regime.
"Without a doubt," Shadid writes, "fear keeps the government in
power. But so do guns, money, and, in particular, food. The
success of Baghdad's overtures is a key reason that, despite
intense US pressure, the government remains secure and perhaps
even stronger than in past years, according to diplomats who have
been closely following Hussein's administration."

The Times and Globe
reports do nothing to dispel the fantasies of such pro-war
ideologues as Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney that a war aimed at
"regime change" will lead to the quick fall of Saddam (likely) and
the establishment of a new peaceful, democratic order in the Arab
world (what are they smoking?). For that, I recommend James
Fallows's thoughtful and frightening cover story in the current
Atlantic Monthly on the likely outcomes of a US invasion.
The title is "The
Fifty-First State?", and
the question mark is only to indicate that that is the best
possible outcome. The worst? You don't want to know -- but you
should.

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About Media Log Archives

The Boston Phoenix's Media Log was launched in 2002 by the paper's then-media columnist, Dan Kennedy, who continued it until he left the paper in 2005. The Phoenix's current media columnist, Adam Reilly, is now the author of Media Log, which has since been renamed Don't Quote Me. Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, blogs at Media Nation.